We hope that this letter finds all of you happy and healthy this Christmas Season. This has been an eventful year for us, full of adjustments in our first year of marriage. All of it for the good, we are both very happy! We celebrated our first anniversary a little differently than we had originally planned. We had wanted to go back down to Natchez and New Orleans, but in light of Katrina and our crazy schedules, we decided against it. Instead we had dinner with Cotton’s parents at Sonny Williams Steakhouse in Little Rock. Cotton just happened to know the piano man there and he sang us a song.
We both remained active in our Church Ministry as Student Ministry Leaders. We attended a few leaders’ retreats and of course helped out with fund raisers, like Toad Suck Daze and Fireworks Tent. This year at the Fireworks Tent Cotton and several of the youth made bombs out of sparklers wrapped tightly together and blew up things while the tent wasn’t busy, and sometimes while it was… If you haven’t ever seen a sparkler bomb go off, you really should see this firsthand. It is very similar to dynamite and makes a loud bang as it shakes the ground. Cotton had the bright idea of blowing up a 25lb frozen turkey. With the turkey being frozen, it had to sit in the back of Ryan Long’s truck all night to thaw out in the Arkansas July heat. The very next day, with video cameras rolling, they managed to put the Turkey into flight again. The drumstick of the turkey was recovered 125 yards away as was several other unidentifiable remnants. There should be videos on Cotton’s personal website if you are interested.
Off and on during the year we have helped Garth and Melisa Bowman by babysitting their daughter, Arabella. Donna may not always get her way but when it comes to Larashleigh, Bella, and Emma Kate (Trey & Julie Elliot’s Daughter), they have their Uncle Cotton wrapped around their finger. Donna continued to sing on the praise team this year and has sang a few specials off and on throughout the year at church. She still sounds great and with the addition of Odis Richmond to the praise team, they have a sound that is all their own. Cotton has begged for Melisa to let him play the cowbell but she hasn’t let him yet. He does well enough to play the radio. He still manages The Church Alive Website and hosts all of the websites for the Church and helps out as much as he can in his areas of expertise. One such area found him on a mechanical scaffold recently soldering a video line to one of our new projectors in the auditorium. The height didn’t really do him in, instead it was his leg that wouldn’t quit shaking (totally on it’s own) that made he and Garth have to make another run at it to install the church’s new projectors.
Learning to Fly…
Another blessing we have experienced is that Cotton’s business has continued to grow beyond all his and his partners’ expectations. They have an office in Batesville and still maintain all of Mark Martin’s accounts as well as several hundred other clients around the country. As business continues to grow, the demand for the guys to be in different cities across the country has grown. It’s grown to the point to where his partner Kegal, who is a very experienced pilot, has had to fly them from place to place. Cotton has always enjoyed flying but it wasn’t until he and Donna flew to a Razorback Game in Fayetteville with Andrew and Christine Hornacker in Andrew’s Cessna 182, a small 4 seat single engine airplane, that he was bitten by the bug. We made the short trip to Fayetteville in no time and grabbed a courtesy car to eat dinner and onto the game. The trip home was even smoother than the flight down and occasionally we would glance down and see the traffic backed up on the interstate from Clarksville all the way to Fayetteville. Flying is the only way to go. Cotton & Garth started hard and heavy with high expectations but due to their schedules neither one of them has been able to really get on track with their training so far. They have both sat in the pilot’s seat and actually flown the plane but neither has been able to complete the ground school or necessary hours to get their private license. Cotton was able to take off and land with just a little bit of instruction, he now wants Donna to call him “Captain” but she won’t do it. I don’t think that Garth has had any luck either with the “Captain” thing, he was even going to start wearing the Captain’s hat… No respect from our women.
Summer Travels:
In July Cotton and his business partners met in Las Vegas for a Hosting Conference at the Mirage Casino. They had a great time, and made lots of good contacts that have continued to pan out for them all year long. When Cotton landed at the airport he had a limousine take him to meet his partners at Jimmy Buffet’s, he had a blast. One of his partners, Kegal, had been to Vegas several times so he made sure they didn’t miss a thing. The highlight of the trip for Cotton was seeing the fountains at Bellagio. When they start playing “fly me to the moon and those synchronized fountains start going everyone got quiet, it was awesome. He is planning to take Donna out there on their next anniversary so she can see it all firsthand. The weekend prior to Cotton’s Vegas trip, he and Donna flew to Ohio where they got to visit with some of Donna’s family and also see Lake Eerie. Donna’s parents also met us out there with our niece, Larashleigh, who got to tour the Hershey Chocolate Factory. While in Ohio we also attended Jeremy and Jenny’s wedding reception that was held at Holly’s house and when Cotton had to head out Donna got to shop until she dropped in Cleveland with her cousins.
Change of Address…
A few weeks after we had returned from our vacation, our Realtor, Dale Tice, contacted us and told us that she had found a buyer for our condo. We had it on the market the entire time we had been married in hopes it would sell so that we could relocate to Conway to be closer to family and friends and our church. The first deal fell through on the sale and it left the both of us a little heartbroken but we put our faith in God and knew that he knew our hearts so we kept faith that he would bring a buyer our way and like always he pulled through. Our buyer just so happened to be the same person who was unable to secure financing the first time so it all worked out great. So, bright and early on a Saturday morning, Cotton and two of his buddies, Garth Bowman and Trey Elliot, loaded up in a U-Haul truck and headed to Fairfield Bay with Donna and Melisa following behind them to get their condo unloaded. It was an all-morning affair even though everything was already boxed up. There was very little room to spare on the truck; thank goodness we sold the furniture with the condo. Once the trucks were loaded they all stopped for one last Goodwin and Daughters cheeseburger on their way out of town and headed to Conway.
Finding New House & Moving In…
Just when you think things are looking up, you hit a roadblock every time… We had a few new construction homes in mind for when we sold our condo and wouldn’t you know it, they had all sold… Finally one weekend Dustin and Bridgette drove down from Oklahoma City to visit and went house shopping with us. The night prior Cotton had went online and picked out about 4 or 5 listings that he wanted to look at and made arrangements with Mike Bernadsky, a local realtor that they had met earlier, a really nice Christian man who took a personal interest in helping us to find what we were looking for. After looking at two or three homes on the other side of town Mike brought us over to Southwind, a subdivision that is being developed in it’s third phase. We found a 4 bedroom new construction that was exactly what we were looking for. The house wasn’t finished by any means so it was hard to tell what was what but from what we had seen so far we knew that that was the house we wanted. Cotton told the Realtor that he wanted to write a contract that evening because lately everything they had even remotely liked had sold right out from under them. He also threatened to lay down in the driveway and not let other Realtors show the property. Ha. Well, after about three weeks of living at Donna’s parents house we were finally able to close on the new house and get moved in. Donna had already picked out all of the furniture from a store in Helena and it was delivered and setup all in one day. Cotton’s parents followed the guys up and helped out also.
House Blessing BBQ:
Once we had been moved in for a couple of weeks we decided to have a Celebration of Blessings Party for our friends and family that had worked so hard to help us get moved. Cotton smoked about 16 racks of ribs and his business partner Greg and his mother Ilene drove down and managed the grill where they cooked hamburgers and hot dogs for the kids. Trey and Julie Elliot also brought a blow-up bouncy house to setup in the backyard and the kids all had a blast jumping in it and playing x-box in the house. We are not for sure but we think that we had close to 60 or more people show up and have dinner with us. It was a great time and we are thankful for the wonderful family and friends that God has chosen to bless us with.
Christmas Dinner / Celebration:
Christmas this year is going to be held at our new house. We will head down to Helena before Christmas Eve so we can spend some time with Aunt Maxine and Grandma Rohrscheib. Cotton is planning on deep-frying a turkey this year so he has been practicing on our friends who don’t seem to mind too much. He thinks that he has almost got it down well enough to feed the family. Donna has also been practicing her dressing recipe and it has been awesome.
As you can see, this year’s letter is shorter than last years, thanks for taking the time to catch up on what we have doing all year, and we hope to hear back from you as to how 2006 treated you.
Merry Christmas & a Blessed New Year!
Cotton & Donna Rohrscheib
Questions or Comments?